In early 2003, the Department of Education released a tender to build a national education portal. The Thutong portal is the realization of a key objective of the Department of Education's 2001 Strategy for Information and Communications Technology(ICT) in that promised to introduce ICT successfully to schools and to use technology to make a host of curriculum and support material available to South African educators. A consortium led by SAIDE won the bid to develop this portal on behalf of the Department.
Since then the Thutong portal has grown in leaps and bounds and currently boasts well over 10 000 registered users and over 17 000 captured curriculum resources! Janet Stewart provides an update on the project.
Key Achievements To Date:
Usability Testing
The first round of usability tests on Thutong was completed in April 2005. The usability tests took place at schools in the Gauteng Region. The schools used were representative of schools across South Africa, including government-subsidized, primary, high, rural, and urban and township schools. Although the response to Thutong was extremely positive, many users found the registration confusing and the homepage cluttered. A new landing page with simple clear instructions has since been launched resulting in a noticeable increase in the number of registered users in the system.
The second round of usability testing will begin in mid-2006. Important features of usability are:
- Effectiveness - how well the user achieves the goals they set out to achieve using the website.
- Efficiency - the resources consumed in order to achieve their goals.
- Satisfaction - how the user feels about their use of the website.
The purpose of each test is to understand the usefulness of Thutong for South African educators. Results derived from the tests provide constructive feedback from real users and are/will be used to make continual improvements to Thutong.
Content Partnerships
Thutong has established a vast network of unique content partners with NGOs, government departments and private organizations. These relationships represent the beginning of a long-term strategy to maintain the portal in a cost-effective manner. Relationships with publishers such as MacMillan, Cambridge University Press and Easy Maths are changing the paradigm of how content is released into the public domain.
Building partnerships with projects like this will open enormous opportunities to expand the reach of Thutong into Africa and to contain the costs of ongoing maintenance.
Resource Acquisition
Thutong has formed new relationships with official news providers, departments of education and organizations active in the education arena ensuring that news of, and from, the South African education community is available to all. Ongoing gathering of news, policy, school administration and management, as well as research resources ensures that a minimum of 100 new items with all associated meta-data are added to the national portal every month.
Resource Workflow
The Resource Workflow Tool facilitates efficient resource quality control procedures for all resources added to the Knowledge Matrix. It makes use of a version control system which allows only one user to edit a resource at the same time. Currently the five steps for this workflow include the following: data capturing, checking for duplicates and unsuitable content, tagging by a specialist, proof reading and lastly, a manager performs a final role of quality checking the resource and tagging and publishing it on the Portal.
Communication Tools
A vital strength of the Portal is its capacity to support a range of communication strategies, especially easy, asynchronous communication between educator and learner, amongst educators, and amongst learners. The portal thereby acts as a facilitator and opens significant new opportunities for learners to engage with educators and support changing roles for educators. Several discussion lists are fully functional and available on Thutong.
Conclusion The development and maintenance of a national education portal has been a challenging and complex undertaking. It has tackled a wide range of aspects of the education system, and demanded simultaneous management and integration of many different information requirements.
Resource acquisition has formed the backbone of the National Education Portal to date, and offers a database containing a selection of reviewed education-related resources and web sites. This content has been categorized according to focus and has been reviewed by South African educators, resource specialists, and/or educational administrators. Continuing this process is crucial in order to maintain a steady flow of resource acquisition.
The Portal's biggest achievement to date is the vast amount of expertise and knowledge gained. We continue to accumulate a wealth of knowledge unique to the local context, making it relevant to the day-to-day lives of each and every South African. We hope that this work continues to make a positive contribution to improving the quality and impact of education delivery in South Africa . Thutong is available at: http://www.thutong.org.za. |
